Introduction

This Monitor issue deals with the big picture. It paints in broad brush strokes to lay out the background before which we all invest, save, and try to eke out a decent living. All of these activities are implicated in what follows, of course, but the material is not specifically investment or finance oriented.

One of the Monitor's main purposes is to lay out the behind-the-scenes framework before which all official, public, financial, and private events are played out. Without a good understanding of the forces that have shaped our reality - and particularly ourperception of reality - to such an extent and for such a long time, profitable investing is simply not possible. That's why what follows may strike you as somewhat "genera;" at time.

Don't let that distract you.

You Have Been “Hegelized”!

It’s always interesting when what you thought was “reality” changes, based on new evidence.

I just recently had that experience while researching the background of a Christian-Right organization, the Council for National Policy (CNP). The point of my research was to find the cause of GOP presidential Huckabee’s meteoric rise from near-total obscurity to allegedly the current quasi-front-runner in both Iowa and New Hampshire, at least according to so-called “scientific” opinion polls. It turns out that all of Mr. Huckabee’s new endorsements from the religious right come from members of the CNP or one of its affiliated organizations.

I came across a website that details how the founding members of both the CNP and the John Birch Society (abbreviated “JBS”, known for its vociferous anti-communist and anti-socialist stance on political issues) share a disturbing fact in common:

They were also members of the Council on Foreign Relations.

To say that it is “unusual” for a founding member of the JBS to belong to the very organization whose aims the JBS so valiantly pretends to fight against would be a gross understatement.

As a Monitor Member, you are most likely familiar with the Council on Foreign Relations, but just in case you are not, here is a [quick rundown] of its actual function in American society since its inception.

The picture we get from the foregoing revelation looks like this:

Here is a quote from an article on the subject penned by Barbara Aho:

“Produced in 1977 by a group of former high-ranking JBS members, "The Belmont Brotherhood" refers to the National Council at Belmont, Massachusetts where JBS national headquarters were originally located. Various sources cited therein document that the early members of the John Birch Society were also members of the liberal Establishment they pretended to oppose, and represented in great measure the corporate interests of America, which are advanced by the oaths of loyalty to one another in a secret brotherhood -- organized Freemasonry. This 12-page report concluded with the perceptive observation that the John Birch Society represents the most diabolical form of the Illuminati conspiracy:”

The Hegelian Principle

That’s where the well-known Hegelian dialectic comes into play. German philosopher Friedrich Hegel observed that human history could be moved in a certain direction by applying a pattern he described as “thesis > antithesis > synthesis.” Marx later applied the Hegel’s dialectic to his view that history is determined by “class struggle” between opposing forces or classes of people in society. He used the dialectic principle to argue that communism (the ideal state of socialism where all social classes cease to exist) is the inevitable outcome of “class struggle” (or human history.)

The revealing thing here is that both the JBS and CNP practically teach their members to regard the CFR as the enemy of American society, while both organizations were actually founded by notorious CFR members.

And that’s where the dialectic comes in.

The observation that the historical (i.e., largely self-determining, unaffected by planned human intervention) process of opposing forces invariably leads to some form of synthesis or “higher result” led to the conclusion that, instead of taking the process as a given historical reality, it can also be used to produce a preconceived, intended, or desired result.

In other words, it became the foundation of the now common practice of social engineering.

The idea is that if you desire a certain outcome, all you need to do is to create designer-made “opposing forces” that will eventually lead to the outcome desired.

Now, to bring all of this abstract theorizing into context, let’s say that you consider yourself as part of the social and intellectual elite in society and you have determined (or agree with your contemporary elitists) that you want a society in which you and your buddies have absolute control over the activities and even the thinking of all humanity that is not part of your August little circle. What do you do?

You split “the rabble” you intend to rule up into factions that fight each other, endlessly, while you pursue your aims behind the scenes.

In the United States, the struggle is between the “left” and the “right”, between secular society and religious society, between “haves” and “have-nots”, rich and poor, black and white, women and men, etc. etc.

Each side is trained to regard the other with suspicion and distaste. In the process of these endless struggles, people become confused and exhausted. If there was ever an ideal type of population that is just begging for control, it is a confused and exhausted population - and if you can’t find it, you just create it.

At the same time, it is also helpful if you can make sure that either side ends up looking to you for assistance in achieving its goal of vanquishing the other.

That’s where we are today.

We have the leftist-secularists who are looking to government to help them force their “ideal” solution on society by taxing productive individuals (the “haves”) in order to redistribute wealth to the less productive ones (the “have-nots”). This is done by convincing the have-nots that the only reason for them not “having” is the greater “luck” of the haves of being born into more advantageous positions in society. In essence, an appeal to human self-righteousness, jealousy and greed.

At the same time we have the rightist-religious folks who want to use government power to impose their beliefs on others by the force of law. An example would be the CNP which has a considerable number of members who want to turn America into a “Christian nation” - with government help derived from taking control of government - while the secularists use the courts to ban all religion from any publicly recognizable presence altogether.

He trick is, of course, that regardless of which side wins, those behind the scenes become more powerful because government gets bigger and stronger, either way. Individuals are dis-empowered, while groups and public institutions assume the lost individual power by default.

Here is Where it Gets Tricky:

In the process of researching all of this I came across evidence that individuals whom I consider as being “pro-liberty” and pro-individual sovereignty as a result of being pro-free market are on the list of founders of organizations that are deeply connected to this entire mess of behind-the-scenes manipulation and wrangling.

Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and Hans Sennholz - all exponents of the free-market oriented Austrian school of economics with whom we all are so familiar, were founding members of a group called the Mont Pelerin Society.

One of the other exponents of that society was a gentleman named Antony Fisher who was allegedly encouraged by Hayek to go on a think-tank establishment spree. Among the 150 or so think tanks he is credited with directly or mediately establishing are the heavily CFR-influenced Heritage Foundation and the Mahattan Institute for Public Policy Research.

Other CFR connected exponents of the Mont Pelerin Society include former US Secretary of State George of Shultz (under Reagan) and Walter Lippmann, one of the founding members of both the CFR and the JBS.

So you can see, there appears to be a lot of intellectual incest going on there.

The big question, to me at least, is whether this all necessarily implicates Hayek and von Mises as co-conspirators of the new world order. This is an important question because virtually all current free-market thought, analysis, and opinion is based at least in part on the writings of these two economic and social thinkers.

Are they part of the Hegelian dialectic used spilt people into warring factions in order to distract the general population from the elite’s efforts toward establishing their world dominance, or are they not?

I can only go by what I consider the most sage advice in situations of that sort: “You shall know them by their fruits.”

The fact that a group such as the Mont Pelerin Society sports as much brain power as it does would indicate that other people of the same sort are naturally attracted to it. Therefore, the mere presence on the MPS membership roster of the individuals cited above is not exactly damning evidence, in my mind, even if some of them were of a slightly different persuasion, as in the case of Lippman and Shultz.

The fact that Hayek encouraged Fisher to go out and establish a number of think tanks that would enable free market thinking to penetrate the world’s intelligentsia, as a counterweight to Keynesian/Marxist thinking, is understandable. If some of those later went into a different direction, joined simply in order to “spy” on what the free-marketeers are talking about, or to determine to what extent they can use this new line of thinking to control the masses anyway, that can also not be used to stamp Hayek and von Mises as “elitists.”

One of the greatest currently living and active exponents of the Austrian economics tradition is Ron Paul. He is all about individual freedom and bases much of his thinking on the Austrian school writings. He has proven for over 30 years in public life, 20 of which in Congress, that he is moving in diametrically opposed fashion to the hob-nobbling “let’s make a deal” crowd so prevalent in Washington’s elitist circles.

Ron Paul’s writings and speeches over the past three decades have helped foment a new (old) American Revolution. The Ron Paul Revolution is a revolt of the informed middle class against the divide-and-conquer shenanigans of the world’s power elites. Paul is attacking the elites at the very foundation of their enormous power - their monopoly over the entire world’s money supply via debt-creation.

Another indication of Ron Paul’s genuineness is the fact that he truly is a uniter of otherwise opposing factions, and he accomplishes that without pandering to this or that group. He only points to the freedom we are all capable of living in. He does not even call on people to “take up arms” (in a figurative sense) against the elitists. He only stands on the principles advocated by the Founders and encourages others to do the same. There is no need to attack people, or even groups. Rights belong to individuals, and individuals band together to protect their rights by limiting the power of the elites.

Yet, it pays to remain on guard. If the Ron Paul revolution should really take off and prove to be a genuine and lasting force in public life - even in the absence of a Paul victory at the election polls this spring - there is no telling how many of the power elites will try to infiltrate this movement in order to create factions and dissension so as to continue their so-far successful divide and conquer tactics.

The important lesson to be learned from the revelations is that even organizations who seem the most likely candidates for a fight against “one-world government” can be used to achieve the ends of the elitists. I am talking about the John Birch Society, here.

I myself am a member of that society because they do distribute valuable information about things like Bush’s power grabs, plans to create the North American Union and the amero, etc. However, it appears that they way they are used to solidify the power position of the real elites is to deflect the more thinking members of the public away from the real source of behind-the-scenes manipulation.

According to Barbara Aho’s article cited above, the JBS takes pains to make sure that the “fight” is taken only to the “Illuminati”, but not to the far longer-standing tradition of Freemasonry itself. Guess why? Because any of its originating members and financial benefactors are themselves Freemasons.

This is to provide an illustration of how elitists proceed. It must itself be taken with a grain of salt in that the conclusion itself leads to easy manipulation. If it is taken as the “thesis” and the tradition of Freemasonry is taken as the “antithesis”, you can see how that itself is capable of being directed into yet another “synthesis.”

Whenever you feel like you are being co-opted into a group in order to “fight” against another group, the Hegelian/Marxist dialectic may well be at work, and you’d better beware!

The same thing is so profoundly true in this entire “war” against international Islamic terrorism. The very threat of terrorism was carefully cultivated by those who planned for it to take over as the world’s next bogeyman.

This is not to say that terrorism isn’t real. All you need to do to recognize that is to turn on your TV set, and you know that it’s only too real. But it was cultivated by our very “own” longstanding foreign policy that was foisted upon us by the CFR types. While we get all riled up in our indignation at past and potential terrorist attacks, the CFR types quietly pursue their anti-constitutional power grab and “integration” of the western hemisphere under an extra-constitutional arrangement.

As one writer so aptly recognized: “If we want to unite with Mexico and Canada, why not pursue the completely constitutional method of granting these two countries statehood?”

We could easily allow each country to decide by referendum if they wanted to join us and enjoy the same freedoms we (at least theoretically) have. Everything would be done out in the open, and the result would be greater freedom for all. The reason is that this would not get our elites out from under whatever constitutional restrictions remain in force on them. That is their real aim.

The Role of the Euro

ere is the application of all of this to the situation of gold investors and the fight between free-market forces and the proponents of centralized control:

Ultimately, the euro is not an “anti-dollar” at all. It is in fact a desperate, although admittedly genial, attempt at prolonging the life time of the world-wide debt-money based fiat-system.

The creators of the euro concept recognized that gold cannot be suppressed forever without risking a catastrophic collapse of the entire world debt-structure at some time in the future. They wisely came to realize that, sometimes, if you can’t fight’em it pays to join’em.

So the euro-based system of central banking was set on a path that would not bring it into direct confrontation between debt and real value, i.e, fiat and gold.

First, by marking their collective central bank gold reserves (not only those of the ECB but of the central banks of all member countries) “to market”, they avoided having to suppress the euro-price of gold in order to give artificial support to the euro as a currency.

Second, by strictly limiting the ECB’s policy response to temporary unfavorable market conditions, namely by writing its so-called “anti-inflation bias” into its very founding document, they succeeded in minimizing the dollar-system’s other major flaw: issuing excess credit in a nilly-willy, knee-jerk fashion to “combat” customer dissatisfaction.

Just as the dollar’s time line is limited, so is the euro’s, of course, but at least the euro will last longer and will give the central-control elites more time to adjust and - hopefully - find more way to get themselves out of their predicament.

Ultimately, even the euro system will require an eventual progression toward centralized global control in order to perpetuate itself. The euro is still a debt-based fiat currency. It still has all the same fundamental vices of the fiat dollar, but it tries to minimize them, much like a chain smoker who is unwilling or unable to quit and who is trying to prolong his life-span by “cutting down.” As such, the euro system in essence is still subject to eventual collapse. Its only hope for a long life is to completely eliminate any more rational, more freedom-oriented alternative that may appear on the horizon.

The hilarious part, however, is that in the process the euro system had to align itself with the “powers of gold”, i.e., the free-market forces. In doing so, it has helped set those powers free from their dollar-yoke, and that is what we all are currently investing in.

As the fiat-price of gold rises across the board, the frailties of the debt-based nature of the fiat system slowly begins to .penetrate the common investor’s consciousness. It really is inevitable, especially with Ron Paul out there, pushing the subject in the public arena.

He is no longer the quirky, libertarian-leaning little maverick his opponents try to paint him that. He is the GOP’s top Q4 fund raiser with over 19 million FRN's added to his war chest during the period, and he holds the US historic record of one-day fund raising with his 6.5 million dollar haul on December 16th.

The idea of gold as an alternate, voluntary currency is slowly, uhh, gaining currency.

The concept of the euro was allegedly built on freeing gold up as a wealth asset that people would be saving, while they would continue to spend fiat currency because of its convenience.

The problem with that is, however, that even the euro cannot withstand a direct match0up with gold if and when gold is allowed to circulate freely without being taxed in any way.

While the euro was a time line extender for fiat, gold as currency is a time line extender for human commerce - for the economic viability of individuals who, like it or not, make up any collective, no matter how collectivist your thinking may be.

No individuals, no collective - and when you are dealing with individuals, you had better always be prepared for the unexpected!

Individuals will eventually have to make a decision: Cling to the dying fiat system and lose everything, or use gold to save and spend - and have a chance at economic survival.

The cat is now out of the bag, the genie out of the bottle, the toothpaste out of the tube.

With your help, the Small Business Goldmine, the Monitor’s very web site, will give the idea wider and wider exposure. It is only 3 months old and already got over 21,000 visits from over 16,000 individual visitors in December. Not bad for not even having its major pages rank in Google and Yahoo, yet. MSN’s “Live Search”, on the other hand, already has the Monitor’s main page, built around a high-demand keyword, at spot No. 9 on its front page results. The others will surely follow.

In essence, gold in full currency status in the US, currently the richest and still most powerful nation on the face of the earth and in the history of the earth, will render the elite’s “Third Way” strategies obsolete. It will deprive them of all the weapons they have by literally making them melt in their hands.

Why? How?

Because the United States itself is the social planners’ most powerful tool for social change. Take that power out of their hands, and they are done - world wide.

Ron Paul’s strategy is to utterly deprive them of the use of the US powerhouse - and to return it to those who deserve it: regular Americans. The time is right because now, due to the Internet, there are enough ‘regular” Americans who are educated enough about the real issues in politics and economics to take up the fight.

The best evidence of that is how his candidacy for president is driven to 99.99% by his self-organizing and completely self-policing volunteer army. The bottom line is that the Ron Paul Movement makes one thing very clear:

Elites are no longer needed. They have been overcome!

Defeating the Elitist “Third Way”

The ‘third way” is a Hegelian symbiosis of capitalism and communism. The “best of both worlds” - for the elites, that is. Capitalism and riches and freedom and independence for the elites - and a concealed by effective form of communism for the “masses.”

Doug Fiedor laid it all out in an article he wrote on the ”Third Way” during the Clinton days:

“To keep the best of capitalism in a "Third Way" society, private property must be allowed. Rather than government owning all property and the means of production, as in pure socialism, an alternative is used. In a "Third Way" society, property and business is heavily controlled by government regulation, rather than government ownership.”

“However, in a "Third Way" society, the laws to keep us citizens in line come from the communist model of government -- which means complete government control of everything from womb to tomb. We are to have a semblance of freedom. But the working class people must never have enough freedom (or accumulative power) to interfere effectively in either commerce or government. The moneyed elite, however, work under the capitalist system, and capitalist rules, so as to continue generating wealth. The elite get the freedom, the workers get strictly controlled.”

If you don’t believe him, go to Wikipedia’s page on the subject where you learn the same thing: It’s a synthesis of capitalism and socialism. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.

The Founders’ Way

It is revealing that the path our founders chose and strongly advised us to follow lies completely outside the realm of this dialectic. It does not involve a struggle between two opposites, and therefore does not result in a synthesis that can be brought about by controlling the parameters of the struggle in the first place.

The secret here lies in not being “anti” anything, but simply in pursuing the aim of maximum individual liberty with all your skill and knowledge and commitment. The "peaceful" way is best - because that way you avoid getting locked back into the dialectic matrix.

However, despite the generality of the foregoing, this is primarily an investment newsletter, not a political one, so let’s go straight back to the euro vs dollar situation in view of what we have learned from this little excursion into societal control mechanisms.

As gold investors, we are not simply interested in maximizing dollar returns on our investments, but in building real and lasting wealth.

Wealth provides independence - but only if it is “parked” in a storage medium that is not subject to endless manipulation. (If you pursue wealth primarily to gain power over others, please stop reading right here. You will not gain anything from the following discussion)

The powers that be have correctly identified both gold as currency or as a store of value on the one hand and the rule of law under our Constitution as “too limiting” on their desires for domination and control.

Gold as currency-backing therefore became their “thesis.”

In order to move the world into the direction that afforded them the ultimate level of control, they had to move away from gold. They created a currency that was “anti-gold”- their antithesis. That is our current fiat dollar.

They understood that, in doing so, they would unleash a countervailing reaction from pro-gold forces. As we all know, a struggle surely did unfold between the fiat forces and the gold forces. The forces of gold were temporarily defeated (or rather pushed back) when the Arabs agreed to support the dollar by selling oil only for dollars.

Yet, neither gold nor the dollar completely fulfilled their needs for ultimate control. Gold was too limiting an influence on their desires for maximum power, and the dollar system was too shaky in the long term and too vulnerable in order to serve as a reliable control mechanism.

Their desired synthesis, although far from ideal, is the euro.

The REAL Role of the Euro

The euro allows them the best of both worlds. They can allow gold to appreciate in fiat terms, which serves their needs because they, more than anyone, know exactly that the dollar is an unreliable store of value. They know very well that gold is the ultimate store of value, regardless of the public gold-to-fiat ratio we call the “gold price.” But, in order to fully maximize the power of their gold holdings, they need a currency that can depreciate against gold without thereby undermining its own existence.

That is the real purpose for the euro’s existence.

By marking the euro CBs’ collective gold reserves to market, the euro enjoys an improving reserve position as old appreciates in “price”. At the same time, the buying power (in euro terms) of their personal or institutional gold holdings increases, which supplements their leverage.

The founders’ way, however, is far better and far superior to what they are trying to build - but more on that later.

Writing this and thinking about the ramifications, I have literally talked myself out of my original position that the euro’s creation was merely a stopgap measure, a desperate ploy to extend their ability to control global commerce by being able to continue to issue a debt-based currency.

This no longer appears to be so.

In view of the foregoing discussion, it becomes clear that the euro is a major step for them toward solidifying their power position over a long, long period of time - but this is only true if they prevent gold from becoming itself a freely circulating currency.

By saving gold and spending fiat (euros or whatever) and continuing to price all goods in fiat, they achieve the ultimate control. The now rising price of gold improves their individual wealth positions while at the same time boosting the value of the euro central banks’ currency reserves, which makes the euro more stable as a world wide currency - and as a challenger to the US dollar.

They are the ones who have accumulated the largest private gold holdings during the period of central bank “dis-hoarding” of the nineties. As a result of such dishoarding,, they made gold “cheaper” in terms of dollars and other fiats, thereby artificially boosting the value of the dollar.

Cheaper gold means they can buy more with their dollars.

This continued throughout most of the nineties all the way until 1999. In September of ‘99 the central banks of the euro zone all agreed to limit their gold sales, officially signaling the end of thedishoarding period. Coincidentally, 1999 was also the year in which the new euro currency was first launched, at least in the purely cashless initial form of computer accounting units.

That year was also the year in which gold producer hedging became unprofitable, even downright scary. Remember the huge spike in gold prices in September-October of 1999? Looking back today, it looks like a mere blip on the radar screen, but back then it was a towering inferno for bullion bankers.

Gold in dollar terms was no longer going to fall. It did, for just a little while, but the rudder was turned. Like all large and cumbersome vehicles, there is a lag time between initiating the change of direction and the vehicle actually following suit, just like steering an ocean liner or large oil tanker.

After gold bottomed, it began to rise only in dollar terms. Then, other currencies began to fall against gold, including the euro - but that was okay now, for the first time since 1971!

This all follows the now familiar pattern of the “Third Way”: Wealth, freedom, and privilege for the elites in the form of increased individual and maybe corporate gold bullion holdings, and debt for the “plebs” the working masses, who will jump onto the gold bandwagon way too late and will be unable to benefit from the momentous and long term gold bull run to the same degree as the plugged-in elites who “bought in” early - and extensively.

In other words, all of this was nothing more than a giant, perfectly engineered and executed insider trade - except that it violated no express securities laws on any nation’s books. It was a brand new way of fleecing the sheep that did not have to lead to a deflationary depression as it did the last time a fleecing of similar magnitude had been engineered - the 1928 stock market crash followed by the Great Depression.

At least, so they thought.

We are in the beginning of a credit collapse of mammoth proportions. Much unlike the euro’s planned depreciation against gold, however, this one does definitely NOT benefit the elites. On top of that, in a hilariously ironic way, the entire credit-doom scenario can only be fixed by allowing gold to circulate as a currency, and that will force the elites to actually spend their accumulated gold in order to finance their desired lifestyles.

By spending their gold into full and free circulation, it will achieve the widest possible distribution, and that means it will come into the hands of every Joe Blow like you and me, and benefit us as much as it benefits the elitists.

Poof!

No more special privileges by them getting the jump on gold ownership. “Aus, der Traum!” as we say in German. Dream over. Time for a reality check. Mission not accomplished.

No new fiat currency like the planned “amero” can pull the world out of the escalating credit crunch. How could it? More of the same problem will not solve the problem. The euro’s existence does not solve it, either. Credit is credit, and defaults destroy credit, no matter what each credit unit is called.. It’s as simple as that.

The elites can resist going to a full gold and silver currency as long as they want. Sooner or later, the pain will become so intense, even on them, that they will not be able to resist forever.

The process can be hastened, though, and the pain tremendously lessened, by doing what Ron Paul proposes much sooner, rather than later.

If gold is free (from taxation and allowed to circulate alongside and in competition with fiat), the people are free. If gold is tied up in any form or fashion whatever, the people are not free.

As noted above: “You shall know them by their fruits.”

The FEMA Detention Camps

You may not be familiar yet with the fact that the Federal Management Emergency Administration (FEMA) has qietly and consistently been building detention camps or converting closed military bases to such over the past decade. FEMA officially claims they are for detaining "illegal aliens" if they were to flood our country.

Yeah, right. The federal government is so keep on stopping illegal immigration, isn't it? That's why it imprisons US Border Patrol agents who take their jobs seriously, like Ramos and Compean.

Many people believe that these detention camps are what the elites are “planning for us”, that this is how they intend to assume total control over every civilian in America. However, detention camps only become necessary in the case of actual, violent popular uprisings - or at least a significant and viable threat of such uprisings.

Knowing how these guys think and observing how they proceed, though, tells me that this is not their actual plan. It is merely a contingency plan. These camps will be utilized if and when whatever their real plans are become threatened to a degree where they have no other choice left.

They don’t really benefit from having to exert that level of open force. The entire carefully orchestrated and meticulously planned and executed “Third Way” proves that.

The point is control with a minimum amount of required force. Communism and open Fascism like that of Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy have proven to be unworkable because they are less than ideal models of governance. They require too much exertion of outright force.

China’s amalgam of political communism with economic capitalism is a better way, but is historically not suited for US consumption. There is too much of a tradition of freedom and anti-communism here.

For the US, a pretense of continued constitutional rule is required, at least to some degree, into the near future. Only gradual tightening of the legal and regulatory screws over a long period of time promises "success" of the desired kind.

But the Internet and the Ron Paul revolution have just made a huge dent in that plan. I daresay that the plan has already been defeated.

Investing in the Post-"Third Way" World

There is no better investment that gold (and silver) bullion. Period. End of story.

If you have any gold stocks in a 401k-type plan, this coming weekend I will forward information on how to convert them into American gold eagles-funded individual IRAs in order to minimize your gold stock losses and maximize your "leverage" to the new investing paradigm. Those who jump in early will benefit most.